Archive for the ‘Terrorism’ Category

A faithful atheist, Christopher Hitchens wrestled with God. I appreciated watching it in action. It was like witnessing Jacob go round after round with the Maker begging to be blessed. Hitchens wanted to be blessed with belief, I believe.

Perhaps I’m wrong, but it seemed to me he felt cursed by not being allowed entre into an intellectual world he couldn’t understand. His unbelief limited his understanding of the world both literary and literal and unlike so many, he seemed aware of his lack. He seemed to resent it. So, he fought.

An honest believer of any stripe fights. The mindless, whether atheist or God-fearer, makes a mockery of belief itself. Some might be surprised that a man who seemed to so despise God would be respected by believers. Here’s been my experience: the fighters acknowledge Something whether conscious or not.

One of my favorite Hitchens moments was between Christopher Hitchens and Andrew Sullivan in a debate moderated by the incomparable Tim Russert. At one point, Hitchens decried Andrew’s whining like a little girl. It was offensive, un-p.c. and completely deserved.

Being Christian is one thing. Fighting for a cause is another, and much easier to acknowledge – for in recent times it has grown clear that the Christian religion is threatened with a dangerous defeat by secular forces which have never been so confident.

Why is there such a fury against religion now? Because religion is the one reliable force that stands in the way of the power of the strong over the weak. The one reliable force that forms the foundation of the concept of the rule of law.
The one reliable force that restrains the hand of the man of power. In an age of powerworship, the Christian religion has become the principal obstacle to the desire of earthly utopians for absolute power.

While I was making my gradual, hesitant way back to the altar-rail, my brother Christopher’s passion against God grew more virulent and confident.

As he has become more certain about the non-existence of God, I have become more convinced we cannot know such a thing in the way we know anything else, and so must choose whether to believe or not. I think it better by far to believe.

And then he writes of his brother:

My brother and I agree on this: that independence of mind is immensely precious, and that we should try to tell the truth in clear English even if we are disliked for doing so. Oddly enough this leads us, in many things, to be far closer than most people think we are on some questions; closer, sometimes, than we would particularly wish to be.

The same paradox sometimes also makes us arrive at different conclusions from very similar arguments, which is easier than it might appear. This will not make us close friends at this stage. We are two utterly different men approaching the ends of two intensely separate lives.

Let us not be sentimental here, nor rashly over-optimistic. But I was astonished, on that spring evening by the Grand River, to find that the longest quarrel of my life seemed unexpectedly to be over, so many years and so many thousands of miles after it had started, in our quiet homes and our first beginnings in an England now impossibly remote from us.

It may actually be true, as I have long hoped that it would be, in the words of T. S. Eliot, that ‘the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time’.

My initial answer to the question was a version of “isn’t it pretty to think so”? My second thought was who can know the mind of men? And that reminded me of I Corinthians 2:11 (again in the King James version because I’m partial):

“For what man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him? even so the things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God.”

Or said in a modern way, “After all, who knows everything about a person except that person’s own spirit? In the same way, no one has known everything about God except God’s Spirit.”

We can only know believers by their fruit and forgive me, but Christopher Hitchens was withering. Ultimately, his belief is between him and God. It is for all of us.

Either way, I’m thankful for Christopher Hitchens. His keen mind and incisive questions forced a believer to be better in his answers.

And that is why I’ll miss Christopher Hitchens most–his unintended consequences. It is with great irony that he caused many who were learning, to come to the truth–even if he couldn’t.

He would always rather fight than give way, not for its own sake but because it came naturally to him. Like me, he was small for his age during his entire childhood and I have another memory of him, white-faced, slight and thin as we all were in those more austere times, furious, standing up to some bully or other in the playground of a school we attended at the same time.

This explains plenty. I offer it because the word ‘courage’ is often misused today. People sometimes tell me that I have been ‘courageous’ to say something moderately controversial in a public place. Not a bit of it. This is not courage. Courage is deliberately taking a known risk, sometimes physical, sometimes to your livelihood, because you think it is too important not to.

“I’m deeply concerned that President Obama is putting political expediency ahead of sound military and security judgment by announcing an end to troop level negotiations and a withdrawal from Iraq by year’s end. The President was slow to engage the Iraqis and there’s little evidence today’s decision is based on advice from military commanders.

“America’s commitment to the future of Iraq is important to U.S. national security interests and should not be influenced by politics. Despite the great achievements of the U.S. military and the Iraqi people, there remain real threats to our shared interests, especially from Iran.

“The United States must remain a firm and steadfast ally for Iraq, maintaining an ongoing diplomatic, economic, and military to military partnership with this emerging democratic ally in the Middle East.

“As a veteran and commander-in-chief of national guard forces, I cannot express enough appreciation for our military service members who have protected and defended American interests in Iraq. Our Iraq war veterans made enormous sacrifices to make our nation and world safer, and I know all Americans will welcome them home with great pride and appreciation.”

The former U.S. Speaker of the House said he was critical of Bush’s decision to stay in Iraq after the initial 2003 campaign toppled Iraq President Saddam Hussein. Since then, he said, he has tried to support a solution, but none came.

“We won the first Iraq war in 1991 and very effectively, in four days driving them out of Kuwait. We won the second Iraq War in 2003 in defeating Sadam in 22 days,” he continued. “And then for reasons I don’t understand we tried to occupy and try to change Iraq and that eight-year campaign is now ending in failure. The fact is the Iranians are now stronger in Iraq than we are.

“This is not about Obama,” he continued. “This is about the general effort that far trensends Iraq. That we have to really reassess our strategies in the region and what we think we’re accomplish. The president is right. You can’t just leave 3,000 or 5,000 troops there. They would simply become targets. If you’re not going to occupy the country, you have to withdraw.”

Gingrich said he feels the same way about America’s effort to occupy and attempt to bring stability to Afghanistan, and said the same lessons “apply to the whole region.”

“We need to think very carefully about what we are doing there,” he said of Afghanistan.

His comments also came after new reports about Gadhaffi’s death suggested he may have been summarily executed by rebel troops.

“Vicoius dictators who torture and kill people are not in very good position to ask for mercy,” Gingrich said.

I don’t feel like Iraq is a failure, do you? It just seems like it could be more successful. It seems like the little sapling needs time to grow.

I’m curious about what Iraq vets feel about the draw-down. Do they feel like it’s the right thing to do? Informal survey for everyone. If you are a veteren, please share your opinion.

Mike Lackomar, of Michiganmilitia.com, said both The Southeast Michigan Volunteer Militia and the Michiganmilitia.com were not a part of the raid.

Lackomar said he heard from other militia members that the FBI targeted the Hutaree after its members made threats of violence against Islamic organizations.

“Last night and into today the FBI conducted a raid against homes belonging to the Hutaree. They are a religious cult. They are not part of our militia community,” he said.

Lackomar said he was told there were five arrests Saturday and another five early Sunday. The FBI declined to comment.

One of the Hutaree members called a Michigan militia leader for assistance Saturday after federal agents had already began their raid, Lackomar said, but the militia member — who is of Islamic decent and had heard about the threats — declined to offer help. That Michigan militia leader is now working with federal officials to provide information on the Hutaree member for the investigation, Lackomar said Sunday.

“They are more of survivalist group and in an emergency they withdraw and stand their ground. They are actively training to be alongside Jesus,” he said.

Sources from the Michigan militia community said one of the FBI raids took place Saturday during a wake for a Hutaree member who had died of natural causes. A Hutaree leader was arrested during the wake while at the same time agents were conducting raids at other locations.

There were three arrests total. But the meme that is out there is “Christian Militias” planning attacks on Muslims.

There’s not enough information out there yet, but even the basics of this story are bothersome.

You know, like the crotch-bombers dad contacted the consulate in Nigeria. Like that.

What Dick Cheney was banging away at again on This Week, yesterday, is the mentality of the Obama administration. It’s dangerous.

Someone who has knowledge about an act yet to happen, even someone credible (like the girl who is being followed by a gang of other kids), will not get much attention because there is no “proof” or as the Seattle police said:

“Seattle police have said they did everything they could to separate the girl from another group, but did not witness unlawful behavior before the attack.”

Kind of like the roving bands of young men in my neighborhood recently–the guys scoping out homes to rob. They aren’t precisely doing anything wrong because they’re just “taking a walk”, which isn’t illegal.

This mentality informs Janet Napolitano and President Obama and Eric Holder and everyone within the administration.

It makes the country ripe for attacks. It is dangerous.

And so, it’s not really shocking when the bully makes it through the system and then kicks the innocent’s butt in full view of everyone. That will happen more, not less, with the administration’s decisions on terrorism.

The American people have clarified how they want these events handled. After the press railed on and on about civil liberties this and that, Americans thought a law-enforcement approach might be better.

Now, having seen it action, people have are soundly against the civilian trials, closing Guantanamo and the political correctness that get’s us the Ft. Hood killer.

The American people may not like Cheney all that much, but having a badass like that making decisions about evil terrorists is a lot more comforting than a guy like Obama watching as the innocent victim gets kicked in the head because procedure needs to be followed.

In other words, rendition remains an option, but not Gitmo or CIA detention. For a while, we took them to Bagram, but the US has pledged to turn Bagram back to the Afghanis at the end of next year. We have almost 800 detainees in Bagram, some of whom were captured elsewhere. Karzai no longer allows us to do that, though, which means that anyone captured will have to get sent to a regular military prison, transferred to our criminal-justice system, given to another country with some interest in the detainee, or released altogether. Since capturing a prisoner entails a lot of risk to the personnel that attempt the mission, the US has increasing opted to shoot from a distance and eliminate all of the other headaches.

What do we lose in this transaction? With a network leader like Nabhan, we lose the ability to get information on a wide range of important issues, like funding, network nodes, communications techniques, and of course plots in the pipeline. Killing Nabhan makes it difficult for AQ to operate, but capturing and interrogating Nabhan would have put us in AQ’s OODA loop for a short but critical period of time, which would have led us to more terrorists and a better picture of AQ’s operations.

Cries to try terrorists only in military courts lack foundation. There have been three convictions of terrorists in the military tribunal system since 9/11, and hundreds in the criminal justice system — including high-profile terrorists such as Reid and 9/11 plotter Zacarius Moussaoui.

This administration’s efforts have disrupted dozens of terrorist plots against the homeland and been responsible for killing and capturing hundreds of hard-core terrorists, including senior leaders in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia and beyond — far more than in 2008. We need no lectures about the fact that this nation is at war.

Politically motivated criticism and unfounded fear-mongering only serve the goals of al-Qaeda. Terrorists are not 100-feet tall. Nor do they deserve the abject fear they seek to instill. They will, however, be dismantled and destroyed, by our military, our intelligence services and our law enforcement community. And the notion that America’s counterterrorism professionals and America’s system of justice are unable to handle these murderous miscreants is absurd.

I actually agree: Politics have no place in national security.

But this admonishment is nigh unto guffaw-worthy coming from an administration that got elected on the politically charged platform of closing Guantanemo, stopping “torture” (the military does not and never has tortured), and “gaining respect” in the world again–implying that President Bush diminished respect.

In fact, President Obama cannot stop blaming President Bush, who managed to keep America safe after 9/11.

A year ago, when President Obama gave his Egypt speech and then softened his stance to terrorism and used the language of appeasement, I wrote that he would pay an inordinately high political price should America get attacked.

Well, America has been attacked…and not just one time. And when America has been attacked, the administration has bumbled around both rhetorically and policy-wise. They don’t know what they’re doing. It’s obvious.

And the administration has used political theater to try to win points with the public and their greater audience the world, by bringing the Khalid Sheik Mohammed trial to New York City. The only problem is that no one wants the trial there, including the very liberal New Yorkers who voted for Obama. Oops! Wrong use of politics!

So, while the Obama administration is coming around to Bush-style terrorism approaches, they don’t want politics used against them. Well, the American people aren’t interested in fighting fair. They’re interested in their commander-in-chief having a spine.

When President Obama is perceived as weak, it doesn’t matter if every single policy is the same as the Bush administration–it’s not, but for the sake of argument. The American people won’t forgive harm in the face of weakness.

I submit that President Bush would have gotten more of a pass had another attack happened because people perceived that he was doing everything within his power to fight terrorism. And he didn’t wince when he talked about evil jihadists.

Remember when Janet Napolitano included Pro-Life groups in her terrorist lists? Yeah, well, looks like her talk resulted in illegal government action. From Lifenews:

In response to an open records request by the Alliance Defense Fund and Pro-Life Wisconsin, the Middleton Police Department and the Wisconsin Department of Justice, along with the Department of Homeland Security all refused on February 4 to release copies of the threat assessment.

Pro-Life Wisconsin officials told LifeNews.com that the assessment was “inappropriately shared” and should never have targeted pro-life groups.

“The majority of Americans identify themselves as pro-life, and the Middleton Police Department has shown they are out of touch with this peaceful majority,” said Peggy Hamill, state director of the pro-life group. “Pro-lifers are not a minority of the population, nor are they second-class citizens. We refuse to let our First Amendment rights be silenced.”

A few months later in 2009, the Department of Homeland Security’s Office for Civil Rights concluded the investigation was an improper use of department resources.

The conclusion said the department inappropriately directed against activities protected by the First Amendment, in which law enforcement inappropriately engaged in “the collection, retention and dissemination of U.S. person information regarding protest groups which posed no threat to homeland security and… violated [DHS] Guidelines.”

Hamill said DHS destroyed its copies of the report, but the Middleton Police Department retained its copy.

In January 2010 the Alliance Defense Fund, on behalf of Wisconsin pro-life advocates, asked the Middleton Police Department for a copy of the report pursuant to Wisconsin’s open records laws.

The Middleton Police Department refused to disclose the report and further said that the DOJ similarly refused to authorize disclosure of the report, despite the fact that DHS had already determined that the report was an improper investigation of freedom of speech activities.

“This move by DHS illustrates the Obama administration’s goal of silencing pro-lifers. It is disturbing that a local police department has apparently tapped into the security apparatus of the federal government to potentially obstruct free speech,” Hamill concluded.

“Last year, DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano unjustly included pro-lifers in a report on domestic terrorism, and here we see her words in action,” she said.

One of the more interesting parts of the Scott Brown campaign was his defense of enhanced interrogation techniques. The Massachusetts voters approve of them, and him. Says Andy McCarthy:

It was health care that nationalized the special election for what we now know is the people’s Senate seat. But it was national security that put real distance between Scott Brown and Martha Coakley. “People talk about the potency of the health-care issue,” Brown’s top strategist, Eric Fehrnstrom, told National Review’s Robert Costa, “but from our own internal polling, the more potent issue here in Massachusetts was terrorism and the treatment of enemy combatants.” There is a powerful lesson here for Republicans, and here’s hoping they learn it.

One of the great frustrations of the Bush years was the fact that the administration had strong national-defense and counterterrorism policies that it shied away from defending. On enhanced-interrogation tactics, for example, President Bush’s position resonates with most Americans: When the nation is under siege, nothing is more important than getting life-saving intelligence. And, particularly when we are dealing with terrorists who are trained to resist interrogation and exploit our legal system, we must aggressively interrogate them and keep them out of our legal system. The opposing position, espoused most prominently by Sen. John McCain, was counterfactual and incoherent. Senator McCain pronounced both that enhanced interrogation (which he called “torture”) never works (which is patently untrue) and that an interrogator might at most use it in a ticking-bomb situation (the last situation in which you’d want to use it if, in fact, it never works).

It seems that the American people are getting an opportunity to compare and contrast the “keep America safe” techniques of President Bush and President Obama. President Obama is found wanting. And hypocritical. And ineffectual.

The press, though, continue to pound this “torture” meme. For once, Christiane Amanpour is stopped by Marc Theissen, author of the book Courting Disaster: How The CIA Kept America Safe and How Barack Obama Is Inviting The Next Attack. Here’s the clip:

The American people are very sensible. They don’t want people randomly waterboarded. They also know that the government has water boarded precisely three (3) terrorists and none have been water boarded at Guantanemo Bay.

It is atrocious that the Crotchbomber in Michigan never got questioned. I watched the testimony on the hill from America’s leading defenders–Janet Napolitano, and the DHS and the rest of the defense guys and was appalled. I thought Jeff Sessions was going to have a heart attack, he was so angry. And rightly so.

The American people don’t need a news anchor telling them that the Khemer Rouge is the same as the CIA with three confirmed terrorists. The moral equivalence is appalling.

According to Obama administration officials and USA Today, Americans will be shocked when they see the results of some internal reports regarding the Crotchbomber:

WASHINGTON — White House national security adviser James Jones says Americans will feel “a certain shock” when they read an account being released Thursday of the missed clues that could have prevented the alleged Christmas Day bomber from ever boarding the plane.

President Obama “is legitimately and correctly alarmed that things that were available, bits of information that were available, patterns of behavior that were available, were not acted on,” Jones said in an interview Wednesday with USA TODAY.

Oh yes, because Americans have been horribly naive about threats we face while President Obama and his lackeys are informed and had just the right perspective on this “man-made disasters” thingy. No, I think it’s the administration who is shocked. Why wouldn’t they be? They campaigned on softening the stance against man-made disasters and their approach was anything but realistic. From A.J. Strata:

This dialing back on the sensitivity of our responses was openly discussed by John Brennan during the campaign (a Bush era reject from the intel community who couldn’t follow orders and thought he knew better than everyone else). He was slated to be the head of the CIA until the looney left torpedoed his nomination bid. But he is a central advisor to then candidate and now President Obama. We see again the White House vetted its people to the rigor of a White House dinner guest list.

Brennan is probably at the center of the latest National Intelligence Strategy – the guiding bible for the dot-connectors at DNI and the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC). A strategy replete with distractions that are supposed to be handled by other government organizations:

Recall, we are supposed to be monitoring threats and defending ourselves. … There is violent extremists (a.k.a terrorists), insurgents and transnational criminals – all good targets.

But then things get weird. We find challenges such as ‘global economic crisis‘, ‘failed states and ungoverned spaces‘, ‘climate change and energy competition‘, ‘rapid technology change’ and ‘Pandemic Disease (H1N1)‘.

There are no terrorists at the North Pole plotting as the ice melts and refreeze. While providing scientists with detailed polar images we snap automatically every day is not much of a drain on our resources, the fact someone is checking those images to make sure they are not accidentally revealing national secrets means they are not sifting data for possible real threats. Each meeting on H1N1 at DNI was a meeting not watching for threats.

But in Obama’s world, a warm day is more of a threat than a bomb that can halt travel, disrupt the world’s precarious economy and escalate a war.

The American people will be shocked? I don’t think so anymore. The American people so the President lounge his way through the attack so as not disrupt his Christmas vacation. They have heard the inane babblings of Janet Napolitano on behalf of the President. They suffer through the new, civil liberties killing TSA rules while terrorists will skate through due to political correctness.

Insisting that America doesn’t have enemies. Insisting that President Bush was evil and made things up to scare people. Insisting that Guantanamo created terrorists. All these foolish notions created the foundation of President Obama’s stance on man-made disasters. He can’t even say the word terrorism without sounding tremulous and weak. All that good vibe he accumulated could be lost! Oh no! The world loves Barack Obama! Heaven forbid they actually hear him utter a true word.

Americans aren’t shocked. They’re dismayed. They actually believed President Obama was smart enough to know what he was doing as Commander-In-Chief. It’s clear that he doesn’t. It’s not shocking. It’s just more than a little scary.

Americans knew we still fought an enemy. They figured the President knew that, too. They figured wrong.

Liberal bloggers are so very, very brave. They can quote out of context and everything! They can also question the bravery of others while not being brave themselves. They can accuse other of hypocrisy and can’t see their own. It’s awesome. Ummmm:

I’m more than a little troubled/confused by the story of Kurt Westergaard, the Danish cartoonist who survived an attack this Friday from an axe-wielding critic by hiding in a semi-fortified panic room. (Westergaard drew one of the controversial Muhammad cartoons in 2005). I mean, there are any number of complexities about the story, but here’s the one that I’m most perplexed by.

At the time, Westergaard was looking after his five-year-old granddaughter, Stephanie. He was confronted with a terrible choice: risk being killed in front of his granddaughter, or trust that the PET, Denmark’s security and intelligence service, knew what they were talking about when they had told him terrorists usually don’t harm family members but stick to their target.

Westergaard chose to escape into his bathroom, which had been specially fortified as a “panic room”, while Stephanie was left sitting in the living room. From the bathroom he alerted the police as his assailant reportedly battered the reinforced door with the axe, shouting, “We will get our revenge!”

Both survived unscathed, although God knows how a 5-year-old processes something like that, and you’ve got to imagine her folks aren’t going to be letting Grandpa babysit again anytime soon. Still, how does one even make that choice? Was it really a rational process, as implied above? I could not even begin to say. Or judge.

Well, actually, I think that this author is judging…as am I. If there was a way to get the kid to the safe room, I’m guessing he would have, right? If he callously left her…what the hell? But of course, there’s more to the story.

“Those minutes were horrible,” Westergaard recalled yesterday. “But I think I have got through this fairly well – and so, it seems, did my grandchild. That, of course, is the main thing. I would not have been able to live with myself if something had happened to her.”

From the outside, Westergaard’s house in Aarhus, Denmark’s second-biggest city, looks like your average suburban home. But according to the cartoonist, it is a “fortress without a moat”, equipped with security cameras and armoured windows. Living under the constant threat of revenge, he has always had to take precautions when leaving his home – visits to the gym, for example, could not be at predictable hours, so he would change his schedule every week. He carries a personal alarm and tracking device everywhere, and every day a police car would escort him to and from his work at Denmark’s biggest-selling daily newspaper.

Makes me think the above blogger wants to note the cartoonist’s hypocrisy…he’s not all that brave. While she also omits that this guy is being hounded by radical Muslims every day because of a cartoon.

Can we focus on the closed-mindedness here? Imagine, say, that the cartoon was about Jesus and years later the cartoonist had to have a police escort and a tracking device and a safe room.

It’s called perspective liberals. While you kvetch about his cowardice leaving his grand-daughter in the living room–something, I too, question–you also ignore the constant, relentless threat he lives under for being an artist who dared poke fun of the Religion of Peace. The real story is that a couple years later, psychotic Muslims aren’t enlightened enough to endure criticism of their religion and then reinforce all stereotypes of a barbaric religion by being barbaric. (Ya gotta admit, an axe is pretty barbaric, no?)

It’s also getting more difficult to ignore the Religion of Peace when their extremist adherents are trying to blow up planes on Christmas. Oh yes, they respect other religions as much as they endure insults to their own.

So, until Islam goes through a reformation, focus your ire where it belongs: On the psychotic people unwilling to embrace enlightened values like tolerance and love and peace. You know, all those things John Lennon liked to imagine. It’s not the Christians conducting a jihad, here. They’re making difficult choices like whether they have time to pull their five year old granddaughter into the safe room without getting them both killed by an ax-wielding Muslim or trying to not get blown up on their plane home on Christmas.